[ad_1]
The lawyer representing a police officer jailed for raping his colleague says there has been a serious judicial error.
Jamie Anthony Foster.
Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
Jamie Anthony Foster was found guilty of groping and then raping an officer after a jury trial in Auckland in March.
He has always maintained his innocence and today took his case to the Court of Appeal in an attempt to overturn his conviction.
Foster lost his composure hearing the guilty verdicts at his trial, swearing on the bench and exclaiming it wasn’t fair.
He flatly denies having raped his colleague, a crime for which he is now serving a six-year prison sentence.
In today’s Court of Appeals, his attorney Paul Borich said his client was not treated fairly.
“This appeal is about Jamie Foster and how his trial radically deviated from normal trial practice to such an extent that it did not receive a fair trial and suffered serious judicial error.”
At trial, the officer told the jury that she woke up when the man raped her while she was sleeping in a Kerikeri motel in February of last year.
Today, Borich argued that the jury did not hear all the relevant evidence. He also criticized elements of how the trial developed in the court specialized in sexual violence.
Borich said that the use of faulty screens, configured to protect the whistleblower from the accused, was not fair to his client.
He also criticized Crown’s final introductions, particularly Fiona Culliney’s opening and closing speeches in which she told the jury that Foster had “helped himself” to the woman.
“What the prosecutor there [did] … took advantage of contemporary and current victims’ issues. We cannot question the victims. Not a woman complaining, not in 2020. If you do that, you are a denier victim, you are a guilty victim, you are anti-women, you are living in the last century. “
Borich said that such presentations amounted to moral blackmail and prevented jurors from doing their job as judges of the facts.
“It was a subtle, powerful and inappropriate defense. It was a morally charged plea for the jury not to do their job, not to scrutinize their evidence. If you do it in the jury room you are as bad as Borich, you are a guilty victim.” . “
In response to Borich’s points, Crown attorney Karen Grau said that the evidence and presentations presented at trial were strong and it was not accepted that there had been a possible judicial error in the case.
Foster was not in court in person or via audiovisual link today, but he had about 50 supporters who sat in the public gallery in white T-shirts with badges that read ‘Justice for Jamie’.
Justices Courtney, Woolford and Mander reserved their decision.
